Without meaning to be disingenuous, here I am plopping words on top of a video that needs none. 

 

In seventeen minutes we are pulled into the events of the birth of Christ, and with no clumsy dialogue to distract us, witness a vast expanse of emotions... uncertainty, fear, trust, pain, devotion, adoration, innocence, acceptance. I find it charming that the short movie has been adopted by a slew of other nations, whose speech I cannot decipher. and still the message is universal. 

 

Words are handy. I rely on them frequently. Yet the path between the faces on the screen and my heart is halved by their omission. 

 

The circumstances of the past year have worn heavily on many people across the world. I hear about them, read about them, pray for them. Surely there will be a bookcase of words printed over the next decade trying to explain them. 

 

But perhaps in the end we will not be rescued by letters and syllables.